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Mars distinctive The red color comes from the mineral ferrihydrite, which is only formed in the presence of cold water, says a new study.
Ferrihydrite is also formed at a lower temperature than other minerals that constitute the surface of the red planet, such as hematite, which had previously considered the main reason for its tone of hoops.
“This suggests that Mars could have had an atmosphere capable of maintaining liquid water before it went from a humid environment to a dry environment billions of years ago,” NASA said in a press release this week.
NASA partially financed the study.
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The distinctive red color of Mars comes from the mineral ferrihydrite, which is only formed in the presence of cold water, says a new study. (AFP through Getty Images)
Researchers in the study, published in Nature Communications this week, analyzed data from several Mars missions, including several Mars Rovers, and the findings were compared to laboratory experiments “where the team tested how the light interacts with ferrihydrite particles and other minerals in simulated marian conditions.” NASA said.
“The fundamental question of why Mars is Red has been considered by hundreds if not for thousands of years,” said the main author of the study, Adam Valantinas, in a statement.
Valantinas is a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University that began the study as Ph.D. Student of the University of Switzerland of Bern.
He continued: “Of our analysis, we believe that the ferrihydrite is everywhere in the dust and probably also in the rock formations.
In this brochure released by NASA, you can see a landscape of Mars in a photo taken by the panoramic chamber in Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in 2003. (NASA Propulsion Laboratory/Jet/University of Cornell through Getty Images)
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The main author of the study, Jack Mustard, described the study as an “door opening opportunity.”
“It gives us a better opportunity to apply training principles and mineral conditions to take advantage of the time,” said Mustard, a professor at Brown University. “However, what is even more important is the return of Mars samples that are being collected at this time by the perseverance rover. When we recover them, we can verify and see if this is correct.”
The investigation shows that Mars probably had a fresh but humid and potentially habitable climate in his ancient past.
Mars’s atmosphere is too cold and then to support life now, but billions of years ago The planet He had an abundance of water, NASA said, which is also evidenced in the ferrihydrite that is in its dust.
Simulated Mars dust laboratory sample. (NASA/ADAM VALANTIN)
“These new findings point to a potentially habitable past for Mars and highlight the value of coordinated research between NASA and its international partners by exploring fundamental questions about our solar system and the future of space exploration,” Geronimo Villanueva, associate director of Strategic Sciences of the Solar System Exploration Division in the NASA Space Flight Center in Maryland, and Coauthor of the Study.
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Valantinas said that what researchers “want to understand is the ancient Martian climate, the chemical processes on Mars, not only old, but also present.”
He continued: “Then there is the habitability question: was there ever life? To understand that you should understand the conditions that were present during the time of the formation of this mineral. What we know of this study is the evidence that points to the formation of ferrihidritas and that that happened, there must be conditions in which the oxygen of the sources or other sources and the water can react with iron. These conditions were very different from the sections of the present. “
